Yes Jimmy Carter is right, we are NOT allowed to criticize this President because he is black. Any critism is racist.

Jimmy Carter is just upset that Obama has taken away his one claim to fame as the worst president in history.

Bill Clinton was theee FIRST AFRICAN-AMERICAN PRESIDENT.

WHAT IS LEFT TO FREE SPEECH? WHAT FREE COUNTRY? WHERE?

Can't critize the blacks, CAN NOT CRITIZE THE JEWS, OR, can not hurt ANYBODY'S FEELINGS--A/K/A BULLIES, AND/OR, EVERYTHING ELSE IS SEXUAL HARASSMENT AND DISCRIMATION.

Everything has gone full circle.

More specifically, Bill Clinton was theee FIRST BLACKK PRESIDENT. Obviously, not an African American, but had offices in Harlem, slumming for the vote.

And, as far as Carter's comment: who voted for Obama? without the white vote he wouldn't have won.

Isn't this partisan politics--like magnets, each attracts its own kind because they wont go along with the program.

And OBAMA'S CZAR CRAP (58 CZARS)--MAKING POLICY CHANGING OUR SYSTEM, CIRCUMVENTING THE NATURAL ORDER OF PROCEDURE, APPOINTING CZARS WITHOUT CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS, AND THEY ARE ABLE TO MAKE POLICY AND NOT RESPONSIBLE TO ANYONE.

ARE THERE ARE MORE WILSON'S OUT THERE?

Read the thread. It is not criticism of the policies but disproportionate anger at the man.

Racism fueled anger against Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy. History does not remember it but I was there and I remember it.

I am afraid that some of it goes with the office. The great men that have held the office seem to understand and accept it.

We are making progress but, as with a lot of progress, it is three steps forward, two back.

Anti-Obama Rage--to speak the truth and not partisan politics, e.g.,

Republican Joseph Wilson is TO THE WHITES WHAT ROSA PARKS IS TO THE BLACKS, REFUSING TO SIT IN THE BACK OF THE BUS AND REMAIN SILENT! The snake is coming back to bite you.

The World Trade Towers always reminded me of strong, beautiful, buck teeth, and a warning to the world. Be careful, or you might get bit in the ass in the United States, but even though now the towers are gone, I can still see the towers' aura in New York Harbor in the mist.

Over politeness has been stretched a mile at the expense of truth. Get respect when you deserve it, including the President of the United States.

Anti-Obama Rage--to speak the truth and not partisan politics, e.g.,

Republican Joseph Wilson is TO THE WHITES WHAT ROSA PARKS IS TO THE BLACKS, REFUSING TO SIT IN THE BACK OF THE BUS AND REMAIN SILENT! The snake is coming back to bite you IN THE ASS.

The World Trade Towers always reminded me of strong, beautiful, buck teeth, and a warning to the world. Be careful, or you might get bit in the ass in the United States, but even though now the towers are gone, I can still see the towers' aura in New York Harbor in the mist.

This question exposes people to something that if they are not a minority,and I don't tend to offend anyone,can not answer.

You have to have worn the shoes,to know what it feels like,so when you see it,you know it right away.

It's truly unfortunate that Pres. Carter's remarks are undoubtedly correct. Come on people, Joe Wilson retains his membership in the Sons of the Confederacy, and battled like mad to retain the Confederate flag flying over the South Carolina state capitol. The people marching on Washington show up with racially charged signs. Now, the latest, is Joe Wilson's son says there is not a bone of anti-black sentiment in his body. Please, give us all a break! Pres. Carter is correct, no doubt about it.

INEPTITUDE comes in all colors. NO racism is involved here.

Jimmy Carter is absolutely right!!
Racist e-mails have been circulating about President Obama since he began campaigning and have become worse since he took office. There are many times that racism is unfoundedly used as wild card in many situations- this is not one of them. Racism definately is playing a major role in the Anti-Obama campaign. The reality of the matter is that Obama has only been in office for a short time, during which he has been working towards the changes that he promised during his campaign. These promises are what got him voted into office and is what he's currently being condemned for- make up your mind America.

I am a white New Yorker and consider myself very patriotic. The American flag hangs off my apartment balcony 365 days a year and I live by the Pledge of Allegiance. I also voted for President Obama and stand by my vote. I would like to add that if McCain had won the vote I would stand by him as president as well because that's what a true American does.

Obama is in fact the current President of the United States and we as citizens should be standing by him- for those who have an issue with his African heritage- GET OVER IT-- last I checked the year was 2009 not 1809!!!!!!

The Democrats purposely ran Obama for president scheming that he would be untouchable during the campaign and during his intended presidency. What a load of crap this is.......nothing but an underhanded race card modeled into a road side bomb! If Obama can't stand the heat then he should get out of the kitchen. Let him be a man the way George Bush was. President Bush withstood ten times the dirt thrown at him than Obama will ever have to endure and just grinned at all the jerks.

Carter is out of touch with the times.

There are some people out there that are racist I am sure but why does Carter point to the relatively few and ignore the vast majority of people who are not racist? He is out of touch with the American people and does not understand what the anger and protests are about.

This is about a whole administration that refuses to do the will of the people. An administration that has control over the media and the bulk of the air ways and in campaign fashion is pushing their one sided point of view down the throats of the public without criticism by the media. Since President Obama is the leader, he bears the brunt of the criticism by the protesters but he is not the only one in his administration that people are angry with.

What Joe Wilson yelled out was by no means racist. I believe he was trying to be a voice for the American people who are against the Health Care plan and spending. Since the main stream media has sold out and refuses to be balanced.

However, that being said, what Joe Wilson did was absolutely wrong!He needs to respect the office of the president. Whether he lied or didn't lie, our elected officials should not be yelling anything like that out in public.

.. Its kinda sad, almost pathetic but very predictable that Jimmy Carter (who was a TERRIBLE INEPT PRESIDENT)and other liberals would cry/shout racism 1st chance they get..

.. Lets take away the "emotion" for a second and look at numbers/facts!

---- Barack Obama WON the presidency with the MOST WHITE VOTERS IN HISTORY! ----- He Won a state like Iowa (with less than 8% of Blacks living in the state).
---- 1 out of 8 people who voted for him are NOW UNHAPPY with him and his policies, are they suddenly racists?


... Now are there some fringe kooks? some racists? yes there are but the bottom line is hes not doing well in polls because of his policies, simple end of story He won the historic presidency with the "white vote", are they NOW racists 10 months later?_____________


PS - Jimmy Carter was a terrible president who lost 44-6 in the 1980 election as a incumbant, think about that 44-6 electoral states to Reagan! OUCH!...

GAIL:
"Republican Joseph Wilson is TO THE WHITES WHAT ROSA PARKS IS TO THE BLACKS, REFUSING TO SIT IN THE BACK OF THE BUS AND REMAIN SILENT"

You can't really be serious,and I am quite sure you have no idea,what Rosa Parks stood for.

The right showed methodical organizational purpose in its muckraking attacks on Bill Clinton. These attacks came from partisan intolerance; anything to oust or discredit a Democratic president.

The attacks on Obama, on the other hand, are often bug-eyed schreechings, amazingly stupid sounding and showing visceral hatred, not "policy differences." While some on the right are after him because he's a Democrat, the wilder rantings of the less well-informed, showing an eagerness to believe he's a devil, or hopelessly flawed, do not appear to spring from political calculation, but from emotion. And not a nice emotion. I know it's easy to cry racism (as it's easy to cry nazism, fascism,etc), and responsible people should try to avoid wild accusations, but the ugliness of the hatred against Obama appears to pass the smell test for racism.

A while ago I said, in response to a comment about claims of an Obama Hitlerian dictatorship, that 1930s Germany was ripe for the rise of a unitary executive, and that the US today has powerful checks in its co-equal tripartite government. There were no significant parallels, I said then, between 1930s Germany and America today.

In the structure of government, yes, that's true. But extragovernmentally there is a parallel. Hitler would not likely have been able to consolidate power quickly enough to avoid a serious challenge to his rise without the help of a significant portion of the populace implementing his policies locally. He was shrewd in knowing that racism, xenophobia, nativism are among the most susceptible of atavisms to emotional agitation by charlatans. Gypsies, Jews, immigrants, gays,-anyone not genetically and ideologically "pure" enough,-were attacked on the street by screaming hard-line right-wing extremists who had earlier been moderate, sober citizens.

How much of the vile feelings against Obama are spontaneous can be given a general estimate by the normal human inclination to not want to stand far out from the crowd. The conclusion suggests behind-the-scenes agitation for political/ideological gain exacerbating and giving encouragement to what usually remains a quiet, sullen racial animosity.

Desperate and Insecure, Whites see country slipping away
Sep 15, 2009 / http://tinyurl.com/qaf6sq
(FinalCall.com) - When a virtually unknown Republican Congressman, Joe Wilson from South Carolina shouted the words “You lie!” during a September 9 speech by Pres. Barack Obama, it was the latest example of the uncivil tone and rancorous atmosphere created by many of the president's opponents on the right.
In recent weeks, town hall meetings have descended into shouting matches, right wing radio and television commentators have become increasingly vituperative in their criticism, and spasmodic outbursts of rage are becoming commonplace.
Calling Rep. Wilson's blunder “an appalling lack of civility in an institution that actually prides itself on civility,” Dr. Maya Rockeymoore, president and founder of the Washington D.C.—based Global Policy Solutions, said some Whites may be experiencing anxiety as the political and social landscape of America changes rapidly.
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/frontpageFeaturedArticle/article_6423.shtml

No tears for Reagan
June 8, 2004 / http://tinyurl.com/558r6l
Excuse me if I don’t shed any tears over the passing of former President Ronald Reagan. While the news of the 40th president’s death brought on a flood of sentimentality over the nation’s media this past weekend, I could not help but recall what the Reagan presidency really meant for Black Americans. Similar to what occurred upon the death of Richard Nixon, amnesia has set upon journalists as they recall Reagan’s era; choosing to indulge in idol worship rather than serious reflection on the former president’s policies.
http://www.blackamericatoday.com/article.cfm?ArticleID=629

Ronald Reagan: The Great White Redeemer
http://tinyurl.com/6jljhm / June 10 2004
Only 12 years elapsed between the glorious military victory over the Confederate Slave States in 1865 and the definitive defeat of Reconstruction in 1877. In many important respects, the Reconstruction period was even briefer than that. By 1870, when the last of the southern states ratified the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, Tennessee had already rejected biracial democracy and installed an all-white “Redeemer” government. “Redemption” then swept through Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.
http://www.blackcommentator.com/94/94_cover_reagan.html

Reagan's heart of darkness
June 9, 2004 / http://tinyurl.com/28ytj
PRESIDENT Bush proclaimed: "Ronald Reagan believed that God takes the side of justice and that America has a special calling to oppose tyranny and defend freedom." In the first three days of news reports on the death of the former president, not a single major American newspaper, television station, or politician has dared to exhume this counterpoint to the Reagan's legacy: "Immoral, evil, and totally un-Christian."
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/06/09/reagans_heart_of_darkness/

Reagan, White As Snow
http://tinyurl.com/6lujee
Last week, as we’ve heard, the Republican presidential candidates praised the name and heritage of Ronald Reagan 40 times during the televised Show and Tell at the Reagan Presidential Library. That none of them mentioned Reagan’s legacy of white supremacy and support for apartheid is a little like invoking Jefferson Davis and not mentioning treason or slavery. Actually, a lot like it.
Ronald Reagan was a white supremacist to his very core, and left enough traces over his lengthy political career so that it’s evident for anyone who cares to look—which apparently few do.
Domestically, he opposed every legislative remedy for African Americans, betraying a meanness of spirit and an open racism. As Sidney Blumenthal wrote in The Guardian in 2003: / http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/05/08/reagan_white_as_snow.php

Trent Lott, Ronald Reagan and Republican Racism
Dec. 14, 2002 / http://tinyurl.com/d9w75
Southern Strategy: The race question has haunted Reagan and the GOP for decades
The same could be said, of course, about such Republican heroes as, Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon or George Bush the elder, all of whom used coded racial messages to lure disaffected blue collar and Southern white voters away from the Democrats. Yet it's with Reagan, who set a standard for exploiting white anger and resentment rarely seen since George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door, that the Republican's selective memory about its race-baiting habit really stands out.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,399921,00.html

ACORN Head Bertha Lewis Vows Action on Employee Misconduct, But Warns Group Targeted by “Modern-Day McCarthyism”
September 17, 2009 / http://tinyurl.com/l693au
The anti-poverty group ACORN is coming under a firestorm of criticism after the group’s workers were caught on camera appearing to offer advice to a pimp and prostitute. The video was a major strike for conservatives, who for years have accused ACORN of voter registration fraud during presidential elections. Republicans are calling for a complete cutoff of all federal funding to the group, which helps poor people fight foreclosures, fix tax problems, and register to vote. We speak with ACORN chief executive Bertha Lewis.
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/9/17/acorn_head_bertha_lewis_vows_action

Carter, the anti-Semite hypocrite should clean his own house before lending his wothless opinions to the world.

Ronald Reagan, one of the most loved presidents in all of American history

---------------------------------------

Reagan, No Racist:

By Deyroy Murdock (a black journalist)

November 20, 2007 7:00 AM

In his memoir, An American Life, Reagan wrote: “My mother and father urged my brother and me to bring home our black playmates, to consider them equals…There was no more grievous sin at our household than a racial slur or other evidence of religious or racial intolerance.”

In 1931, Reagan was on Eureka College’s football team. One night, Reagan biographer Lou Cannon recalls, an Elmhurst, Illinois hotelier refused lodging to two of Reagan’s black teammates. Reagan invited them to stay at his parents’ home, where Mr. and Mrs. Reagan welcomed them. Reagan “and one of the players, William Franklin Burghardt, remained friends and correspondents until Mr. Burghardt died in 1981,” Cannon wrote Sunday.

As an adult, Reagan had a long history of bias-free fair-mindedness. As Cannon added:

As a sports announcer in Iowa in the 1930s, Mr. Reagan opposed the segregation of Major League Baseball. As an actor in Hollywood, he quit a Los Angeles country club because it did not admit Jews. In 1978, when preparing to run for president, Mr. Reagan opposed a California ballot initiative that would have barred homosexuals from teaching in the state’s public schools.

Ronald Reagan Jr. recalls the day at a California barbecue when his father dived into a pool to save a black child from drowning.

As president, Reagan named Samuel Pierce, a black man, as his secretary of Housing and Urban Development. While Pierce was outside Reagan’s inner circle, he was in Reagan’s Cabinet. In 1982, Reagan promoted Roscoe Robinson to become the Army’s first black four-star general. Reagan also helped place Clarence Thomas on his path to the United States Supreme Court by naming him chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Reagan’s critics may dismiss these appointees as “tokens.” Of course, they also would denounce Reagan for racism if he had zero appointees of color. Either way, Reagan loses.

Bob Herbert’s deceptions notwithstanding, on June 29, 1982, President Reagan approved a 25-year extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

‘‘The right to vote is the crown jewel of American liberties, and we will not see its luster diminished,’’ Reagan said that day. “Citizens must have complete confidence in the sanctity of their right to vote, and that’s what this legislation is all about.’’ He added: ‘‘As long as I am in a position to uphold the Constitution, no barrier will come between our citizens and the voting booth.’’

Reagan signed this measure at a White House ceremony attended by some 300 people including Senator Kennedy and bipartisan members of Congress. Civil-rights veterans were there, too, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson; Benjamin Hooks, then-president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Urban League president John Jacob; the Rev. Joseph Lowery, head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s widow, Coretta Scott King.

Krugman whines that “Reagan opposed making Martin Luther King Day a national holiday.” Earth to Planet Krugman: On November 2, 1983, President Reagan made Dr. King’s birthday a federal holiday, the first and only such honor for a black American.

As the Associated Press reported back then, “Reagan originally had expressed concern over the cost of honoring King with a national holiday, and said he would have preferred a day of recognition.” Also, when asked at a press conference if he agreed with then-Senator Jesse Helms’s (R., N.C.) claims that sealed FBI files implicated some of King’s associates as Communists, Reagan said: “We’ll know in about 35 years, won’t we?” Reagan telephoned Mrs. King to apologize for that comment.

Reagan warmly honored King at the White House.

“In America, in the ‘50s and ‘60s, one of the important crises we faced was racial discrimination,” Reagan said. “The man whose words and deeds in that crisis stirred our nation to the very depths of its soul was Dr. Martin Luther Kings Jr.”

Reagan added that King “awakened something strong and true, a sense that true justice must be colorblind, and that among white and black Americans, as he put it, ‘Their destiny is tied up with our destiny, and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom; we cannot walk alone.’”

After endorsing the measure before some 200 guests, Reagan handed his signature pen to King’s widow.

As UPI’s then-White House correspondent Helen Thomas wrote: “When it was over, the guests joined in softly singing, ‘We Shall Overcome,’ the battle cry that symbolized King’s struggle for racial equality.”

According to the Washington Post, Jesse Jackson, who attended the event, said of Reagan that day: “We’ve all had high and low moments, and this is one of his high moments.”

“It was a beautiful day, and a beautiful statement was made,” Coretta Scott King told reporters in the Rose Garden. “And the president spoke as president of all the people today.”


President Reagan named Lieutenant General Colin Powell America’s first black national-security adviser in November 1987. He served through Reagan’s second term and was a major player in Reagan’s diplomacy with the Soviet Union’s final leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.

“He was not only my boss and commander-in-chief, both in my capacity as a soldier, but also as his national security adviser,” Powell recalled on CBS News after President Reagan passed away in June 2004. “We became very good friends, both during the two years I worked with him and in the year after he retired, as I did with Nancy Reagan.”

Another of Reagan’s unsung achievements is his signature on the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988. This federal law green lighted the Indian casinos that dot America, from Connecticut’s enormous, eye-popping Mohegan Sun to the slightly more modest but still impressive Pechanga Casino in Temecula, California. Whatever one thinks of gambling, these enterprises earn billions for Indian tribes that had little beyond their traditions until Ronald Reagan freed them to capitalize on America’s betting jones. A true bigot would have let the red man stay poor and hopeless.

Krugman’s latest sludge bucket holds this lump of deep thought:
Reagan’s defenders protest furiously that he wasn’t personally bigoted. So what? We’re talking about his political strategy. His personal beliefs are irrelevant.
O.K., so Reagan loved blacks personally, but pushed us around politically to earn for himself and other Republicans the loyalty of bigoted white voters? So, let’s see: Reagan invited news cameras to capture him extending the Voting Rights Act in 1982 and signing the MLK holiday into law while sitting beside King’s widow in 1983. This clearly was part of Reagan’s effort to boost his standing among white bigots before seeking reelection in 1984.

And how about making Colin Powell America’s first black NSC chief and enriching Choctaws and Seminoles? Obviously, this was meant to galvanize white racists into electing Reagan’s successor, G. H. W. Bush.

“Why is this slur being floated now?” wonders Hoover Institution scholar Martin Anderson, Reagan’s long-time aide, chief White House domestic-policy adviser, and co-editor of several books documenting Reagan’s insightful, hand-written, speeches, and correspondence on public affairs. “I don’t know — maybe the 20th anniversary of Reagan’s departure from office, which is looming ahead, will show that his legacy is far more important than we knew. And that will be intolerable to a lot of people.”

Especially with the White House at stake, Leftist hacks like Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert will keep trying to smear Ronald Reagan as a racist. The obvious implication is that those of us who love America’s 40th president also are either racists or self-hating blacks.

These annoyingly immortal, liberal fantasies are just a steaming pile of lies.

ACORN:House of Thugs

The Republicans Were Correct About ACORN Fixing Elections

Out With Obama - In With McCain!

---------------------------------------
House Votes to Defund ACORN

Thursday, September 17, 2009 3:10 PM

WASHINGTON -- The House has voted to deny all federal funding for ACORN, the community organizing group that has been caught up in several scandals.

The House action came several days after the Senate took a similar vote to block the Housing and Urban Development Department from giving grants to ACORN.

Republicans, long critics of the liberal-leaning group that advocates for the poor, led the effort to cut off all federal funds.

California Republican Darrell Issa, who sponsored the measure in the House, says the "scandal surrounding the criminal activities of ACORN have called into question their role in all aspects of government."

The vote, on a provision attached to a student aid bill, was 345-75. All 75 no votes were Democrats.

Bush Warns Obama on Jimmy Carter:

Outgoing President George W. Bush had a warning for President-elect Barack Obama when they gathered with three former presidents at the White House — be wary of “meddlesome” Jimmy Carter.

Bush, Obama, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Carter met for a photo op and lunch on Jan. 7, and W. told Obama the guy he has to watch out for is “James Earl Carter,” a source disclosed to Newsmax.

According to a source close to the Bush White House, Bush called Carter “extremely meddlesome” and “a real pain in the neck.” Interestingly, Bush also told Obama that Bill Clinton had been helpful and supportive dealing with foreign leaders.

Carter has irked Bush with his globe-trotting efforts over the years.

In April 2008, Carter reportedly met in Syria with a leader of Hamas, which the U.S. considers a terrorist organization, and laid a wreath at the grave of Yasser Arafat.
Carter met with Hamas leadership again last December.
The former president has created controversy by equating Israel’s policies in the Palestinian territories with apartheid.
In May 2002, Carter visited Cuba and met with Fidel Castro. He has called for an end to the U.S. economic embargo of the island nation.
Carter criticized the Iraq war as “unnecessary.”
In June 2005, Carter urged the Bush administration to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay.
In 1994, Carter had traveled to North Korea and brokered an agreement on that nation’s nuclear program. But the agreement collapsed in 2002 after Bush included North Korea in the “axis of evil.”

ACORN, Soros Linked to Franken Vote Grab:

Monday, December 22, 2008 9:22 PM

Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, who orchestrated the recount that gave Democratic challenger Al Franken a lead some six weeks after incumbent GOP Sen. Norm Coleman appeared to win by 725 votes on Election Day, has extensive ties to both the ACORN organization now under federal investigation for vote fraud, and to MoveOn.org ultra-liberal kingmaker George Soros.


In 2006, ACORN endorsed Ritchie in his bid to become secretary of state, and Ritchie also received a campaign contribution that year from Soros.


Indeed, Ritchie has credited his own political career in large part to an obscure, Soros-funded group called the Secretary of State Project (SoS), whose express purpose is to seed state election bureaucracies nationwide with partisan activists -- Ritchie among them -- who are strategically positioned to influence the outcome of close recounts like the one now underway in Minnesota.


The SoS Web site lauds Ritchie as “arguably the most progressive secretary of state in America,” and states: “Thanks to SoS Project donors, Minnesota’s Mark Ritchie – a true champion for Democracy – was able to defeat a two-term incumbent Republican by less than 5 points. We helped close the gap and make the difference with cable television ads targeting women and seniors.”


Nor does Ritchie downplay the role of the Soros-funded nonprofit in his own election win.


“I want to thank the Secretary of State Project and its thousands of grassroots donors for helping push my campaign over the top,” he states on the partisan political site.


Newsmax has learned that contributors to Ritchie’s 2006 campaign, which made him the No.1 official in charge of impartially supervising Minnesota recounts, is a veritable Who’s Who of partisans seeking to alter the outcome of elections, including:



Soros. He donated $250, but perhaps more importantly, he funded organization’s essential to promoting Ritchie’s candidacy.


Anne Chasnow, who donated $150. Chasnow is a longtime voter registration activist who listed her employer as ACORN.


Drummond Pike, a well-known rainmaker for leftist organizations with extensive ties to ACORN, who along with a family member donated $500 to Ritchie.


Deborah Rappaport, who donated $250. Her Rappaport Foundation underwrites progressive causes nationwide.


James Rucker, the former director of grass-roots mobilization at MoveOn.org, and reportedly a co-founder of the Secretary of State Project. He donated $250 to Ritchie’s campaign.

The link to the SoS Project is a major reason Washington Times editor Peter J. Parisi has described Ritchie as a “hyperpartisan Democrat” – not exactly the calling card most states would seek in their chief election official.


SoS is funded in part through Soros’ contributions, according to Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten. Kersten describes Ritchie as a “poster boy” for SoS, and Ritchie has proudly endorsed that organization’s efforts to sway the outcome of electoral contests nationwide.


SoS was founded after Democrats involved in George W. Bush’s narrow 2000 election victory blamed Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris for influencing the outcome. They also charged that then-Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell helped return Bush to power in 2004.


In response, SoS was created to target key secretary of state races nationwide – down ballot races that often can be impacted by even small amounts of money and assistance. So far they take credit for helping Democrats win those key jobs in New Mexico, Nevada, Iowa, Ohio, and, of course, in Ritchie’s Minnesota.


That Ritchie would be the prize protégé of the SoS is no surprise, given his own long history as a community organizer. In 2003, he led National Voice to register over 5 million new voters nationwide.


As ruling after ruling by the Ritchie-led State Canvassing Board has gone against Coleman, some are now openly questioning Ritchie’s influence.


“Mark Ritchie as we all know now is a hard-core liberal who was endorsed by ACORN and funded by ACORN,” Matthew Vadum, senior editor of CapitolResearch.org, a nonprofit think tank, tells Newsmax. “It’s not surprising that he has a permissive attitude toward the recount process.”


A few weeks ago, Vadum says, he expected Coleman to emerge the winner. But now he says Coleman’s chances are “diminishing daily.”


Franken has a 251-vote lead, but many thousands of votes remain to be counted.


“I think things are looking pretty grim. It’s pretty ominous for Coleman. What battle in the recount process has he won? It’s pretty hard for him to lose every single challenge, and yet go on to win the election,” Vadum says.


Kersten, a long-time observer of Minnesota’s political machinations, writes that it’s too soon to say whether Ritchie’s influence and resume will taint the credibility of the contentious recount.

“What we do know,” she writes, “is that the referee in the contest appears to be wearing the colors of one of the teams.”

STEALING AN ELECTION?

OBAMA'S DUBIOUS ALLIES
November 3, 2008

WHETHER or not Barack Obama wins election tomorrow, his campaign has exposed some gaping weaknesses in the electoral process - and some even more serious problems with today's mass media. The question is whether the political establishment will be willing to do anything about them.
On the electoral side, we've seen allegations of massive voter fraud, often backed up by actual arrests and investigations. The FBI has opened an investigation into the Obama-friendly group ACORN, which has been associated with fraudulent registrations and other misconduct in many jurisdictions.
In Indiana, CNN noted, of 5,000 registrations turned in, the first 2,000 turned out to be fraudulent. In Kansas City, officials found hundreds of bogus registrations. CNN also reported on the case of Clifton Mitchell, an ex-ACORN worker who served time in prison for voter fraud.
In Pennsylvania, ACORN worker Jemar Barksdale was arrested for voter fraud involving fake registrations. Meanwhile, the state of Ohio turned up 200,000 questionable voter registrations, but Ohio officials went to court to avoid having to respond. In Michigan, an ACORN worker has been charged with forgery. ACORN activists even tried to register Mickey Mouse to vote in Florida.
Indianapolis, meanwhile - along with some counties in Alabama and Mississippi - turned out to have more registrants than actual live voters. And in Connecticut, a group of journalism students discovered 8,500 dead people still on the rolls, people whose identities could be used to cast fraudulent ballots.
As The Post reported, ACORN also managed to register a 7-year-old girl to vote in Bridgeport, while in Nevada ACORN filed registrations in the names of Dallas Cowboys and had its offices raided by Nevada authorities. In Florida, more than 30,000 ineligible felons were registered to vote.
But it's not just voters who are questionable. While the vote-fraud stories were running, the Obama campaign - after Obama broke a promise to stick with public financing - was setting fund-raising records and bragging about its grass-roots donations. It turned out to have a system for credit-card processing that could hardly have been better suited to enabling financial fraud.
Unlike other campaigns, Oba ma's staff disabled the "Ad dress Verification System" that checks credit-card numbers against addresses to ensure their validity. The result was that people could make multiple donations under different names using the same card, in violation of reporting requirements and donation limits.
And there was nothing to stop foreign nationals from donating directly to the Obama campaign. As Scott Johnson noted in this newspaper, "No presidential campaign has ever before received such a gargantuan sum of money from unidentified contributors."
An investigation by National Journal reporter Neil Munro found that the McCain campaign Web site didn't allow anonymous donations, while the Obama Web site did.
Although there has been some coverage here and there, the response of the national press corps to these rather shocking developments has been a collective yawn. Even some Democrats are noticing. On Obama's broken promise on public financing, former Sen. Bob Kerrey observed, "There's a liberal bias. There's a preference for Obama and it's getting underreported as a result."
Likewise, the voter-fraud sto ries are being downplayed or even spun as unimportant: A recent article in Slate was headlined "Stolen Elections: As American as Apple Pie." (I don't recall them taking that attitude in 2000.) And if it were the NRA, instead of ACORN, registering Mickey Mouse to vote, I suspect the reaction would be different. This election has really served to demonstrate the importance of a free, independent and honest press and how unfortunate it is that we don't have one.
Of course, if the press weren't in the tank for Obama, it might still face intimidation. The Obama campaign threatened the licenses of TV stations that ran an NRA ad that truthfully stated Obama's record of supporting gun control. Obama-supporting prosecutors and sheriffs in Missouri formed a "truth squad" and - until challenged - threatened punishment against those telling "lies" about Obama. Reporters from newspapers endorsing McCain - including this one - were even booted from Obama's campaign plane.
And Joe Wurzelbacher, better known as "Joe the Plumber," experienced a different form of thuggishness, as his rise to prominence led to illegal background checks on state computer systems in Ohio. Helen Jones-Kelley, director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, authorized checks into his background that may have violated state law. (According to OpenSecrets.org and press reports, Jones-Kelley is an Obama donor.)
Information on Wurzelbacher was also accessed from the office of the Ohio attorney general and the Toledo Police Department.
Perhaps it's unfair to attribute all the misconduct of Obama supporters to the Obama campaign, and it's probably over the top to compare Obama to Hugo Chavez and warn of a "Caracas on the Potomac," as the Washington Examiner's Mark Tapscott did last week. But this sort of behavior does raise questions about Obama's character and is sure to leave a bad taste.

The Audacity of Hos
--------------------
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-september-15-2009/the-audacity-of-hos


One Year Anniversary of Lehman Brothers Collapse
------------------------------------
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-september-16-2009/one-year-anniversary-of-lehman-brothers-collapse

Navy to Commission Attack Submarine Jimmy Carter
http://tinyurl.com/yuxy6b
http://www.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=17111

In defense of ACORN
The right-wing crusade against ACORN is a far bigger fraud than any misdeeds a few employees might have committed / http://tinyurl.com/r9gldp
Sept. 18, 2009 | For many years the combined forces of the far right and the Republican Party have sought to ruin ACORN, the largest organization of poor and working families in America. Owing to the idiocy of a few ACORN employees, notoriously caught in a videotape "sting" sponsored by a conservative Web site and publicized by Fox News, that campaign has scored significant victories on Capitol Hill and in the media.
Both the Senate and the House have voted over the past few days to curtail any federal funding of Acorn’s activities. While that congressional action probably won't destroy the group, whose funding does not mainly depend on government largesse, the ban inflicts severe damage on its reputation.
Like so many conservative attacks, the crusade against ACORN has been highly exaggerated and even falsified to create a demonic image that bears little resemblance to the real organization. Working in the nation's poorest places, and hiring the people who live there, ACORN is not immune to the pathologies that can afflict institutions in those communities. As a large nonprofit handling many millions of dollars, it has suffered from mismanagement at the top as well -- although there is nothing unique in that, either.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2009/09/18/acorn/index.html

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

An Allergic Reaction To The Race Card

The increasingly hysterical use of the the race card by liberal columnists, bloggers and politicians reflects the last gasps of people who, being unable to win an argument on the merits, seek to end the argument.

While the false accusation of racism is not a new tactic, it has been refined by Obama supporters into a toxic powder which is causing damage to the social fabric of the country by artificially injecting race into every political issue.

During the campaign, Obama supporters successfully ended scrutiny of Obama's overstated opposition to the Iraq war by accusing Bill Clinton of racism for calling Obama's narrative a "fairy tale." False accusations of racism also were used against Hillary supporter Geraldine Ferraro and against John McCain in order to frame the political debate.

In the 2008 campaign cycle, the race card worked well because it could. The legitimate enthusiasm for an historic black presidential candidacy combined with media bias created an acceptance that there was no way to fight back against the tactic without making matters worse.

Over time, as Obama assumed the presidency and began implementing sweeping plans to restructure society and to run up the national debt to unthinkable levels, opposition to Obama's plans has grown. This opposition has little to do with race, and includes vast numbers of independents who voted for Obama.

The American people, while they still mostly like Obama on a personal level, increasingly oppose his policies and plans. Democrats know that the debate on the merits of initiatives such as health care and cap-and-trade has been won on the merits by the opposition.

Not surprisingly, the pace of racial accusations has picked up as opposition has grown. Just in the past few days the usual and not-so-usual suspects have been seeking to out-do each other in making accusations of racism including Eugene Robinson, Maureen Dowd, Jimmy Carter, Rep. Hank Johnson, Chris Matthews, a wide range of Democratic politicians, and of course, almost all of the mainstream media.

The effect of these accusations is poisonous. Race is the most sensitive and inflammatory subject in this country. By turning every issue, even a discussion of health care policy, into an argument about race, liberals have created a politically explosive mixture in which the harder they seek to suppress opposing voices, the harder those voices seek to be heard.

The stresses this situation has created were exposed at the town hall hearings this summer. The voices of ordinary Americans who never protested anything before in their lives resembled steam forcing its way through the lid of a tightly closed political lid.

But it will not work this time for the effete intellectual bullies for whom the race card traditionally has been the trump card.

Everyone understands that Obama was not subject to the same scrutiny as other candidates because of the fear of being called a racist. That lack of scrutiny gave us a president whose moderate campaign rhetoric belied an underlying agenda which, if revealed during the campaign, would have resulted in an electoral landslide for McCain-Palin. The vocal opposition we are witnessing has everything to do with a sense of being betrayed not just by a candidate, but by a process which was rigged by the use of the race card.

We are seeing for the first time a strong push-back against the race card players. And that reaction is visceral, much like an allergic reaction, from people who have been stung before.

William A. Jacobson

The rich still run the US
America's traumatic recession should have ushered in a wave of progressive political reform. It hasn't happened / 17 September 2009 / http://tinyurl.com/oevhqv
Corruption takes many forms in different countries and locations. Here in the United States it may not be as common to pay off a judge or a customs official as it is in most low- and middle-income countries, but we do have quite a bit of legalised bribery, especially in the form of electoral campaign contributions. The most obvious current case is that of healthcare reform, where the powerful insurance, pharmaceutical and other lobbies are in the process of vetoing some of the most important parts of the healthcare reform that most Americans want and need.
For example, the vast majority of Americans favour a public option – insurance offered by the government, as we have for senior citizens in the Medicare programme – yet these powerful interests are blocking it in the Senate. This is despite the modest nature of the reform, which would not provide free or universal insurance, but rather an additional option that employers and individuals could buy into, with some subsidies for those who could not afford it. The insurance companies don't want competition, and the pharmaceutical corporations don't want another potentially large buyer that could bargain against their own monopoly power over the prices of patented drugs.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/sep/17/healthcare-us-economy-reform

Jimmy Carter’s Record on Race:

2009 September 17

As Jimmy Carter portrays conservatives as violent racists, it’s worth remembering Carter’s own history of racial demagoguery. Carter campaigned for governor of Georgia as a self-proclaimed “redneck,” in an era when that word had pronounced racial connotations. His campaign distributed a photo of his gubernatorial opponent Carl Sanders being embraced by black basketball players to a Ku Klux Klan rally. Carter pledged to invite Alabama’s infamous segregationist governor George Wallace to Georgia if elected. He once said he was “proud” to have the equally segregationist Lester Maddox as his lieutenant governor following the 1970 election, calling Governor Axe-handle “the essence of the Democratic Party” (which he was).

In 1972, Carter promised – then broke his promise – to the newly crippled Wallace to nominate or second him at the Democratic National Convention in Miami, jumping at the opportunity to give the nomination speech for Henry “Scoop” Jackson (and the national exposure that would bring; see Obama, Barack).


According to his son, Jack Carter, the man from Plains had his surrogates lobby aggressively to become ultra-leftist George McGovern’s vice president. By 1976, “Jimmy Who” had traded his “redneck” status for a pose as the “Born Again” exemplar of the New South. (His religiosity poll-tested well. He actually won more Southern Baptist votes than Ronald Reagan in 1980.)

Since the country’s near-unanimous repudiation of his presidency, Carter has lashed out at evangelical Christians, conservatives, the late Pope John Paul II, “Neoconservatives,” and anyone else who — well, everyone who isn’t a Southern “progressive” Baptist who admires Liberation Theology. In his 2005 book, Our Endangered Values, he described “fundamentalists” as people who believe “they are right and that anyone who contradicts them is ignorant and possibly evil.” They tend “to demagogue emotional issues.” Moreover, “They are often angry and sometimes resort to verbal or even physical abuse against those who interfere with the implementation of their agenda.”

That sounds very much like the Obama administration’s race-baiting surrogates, including Jimmy Carter, who was willing to stoke those fires when it worked to his advantage.

Acorn: A Democratic Party Albatross:

Forbes.com

Friday, September 18, 2009

Congress finally took limited punitive action this week after the revelation on Fox News that employees of Acorn, the nation's biggest community organizing group, were dishing out advice to a pimp and his prostitute on how they could game the system to get subsidized housing loans and evade federal taxes.

Our lawmakers' sudden outrage is all a bit rich--and risible. Even in the halls of Congress it's widely known that the sleaze now surfacing in Acorn offices all across the country was first brewed in the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977. The legislation aimed to expand minority home ownership in the inner cities. Under CRA's new rules, banks were forced to go through a costly process of reporting where and to whom they lend money and to show that they don't discriminate or "red line" in minority communities. When banks need approval for mergers or acquisitions, the legislation gives "community groups" the opportunity to lodge complaints against them, alleging suspect lending practices. If there's even the appearance of discrimination, federal bank regulators may put the proposed deals on hold.

The CRA legislation became Acorn's wedge, allowing it to expand its presence in inner city neighborhoods as a community-based housing group. The organization developed a lucrative niche "advising" banks seeking regulatory approvals on how they could comply with CRA and thus avoid complaints by groups like ... Acorn. Major financial institutions like J. P. Morgan & Company and Chase Manhattan, symbols of the capitalist system that Acorn said was the root of all evil, suddenly donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the self-styled radical organization. If the banks didn't cooperate, there was always the implied threat that Acorn would lodge a complaint. It was a shakedown operation that made Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton look like amateurs. "The banks knew they are being held up, but they weren't going to fight over this. They just wrote it off as part of the cost of doing business," a banking industry insider once told me.

CRA would have created temptations for abuse of power by even the most scrupulous of community groups. But Acorn has never been anything but unscrupulous in trying to expand its power and reach. In Acorn's worldview, the ends have always justified the means because the ends are nothing less than a utopian transformation of the world. "We are the majority, forged from all the minorities," says the group's official platform. "We will continue our fight ... until we have shared the wealth, until we have won our freedom."

Acorn has preached the socialist gospel since it emerged out of one of the 1960s New Left's most destructive groups, the National Welfare Rights Organization. NWRO founder George Wiley forged an army of tens of thousands of single minority mothers, whom he sent out to disrupt welfare offices through sit-ins and demonstrations demanding an end to the "oppressive" eligibility restrictions that kept down the welfare rolls. He hoped to flood the welfare system with so many clients that it would burst, creating a crisis that would force a radical restructuring of America's unjust capitalist economy.

For a while the tactic succeeded beyond Wiley's wildest dreams. From 1965 to 1974, the number of single-parent households on welfare soared from 4.3 million to 10.8 million, despite mostly flush economic times. By the early 1970s, one person was on the welfare rolls in New York City for every two working in the city's private economy. Yet far from sparking a restructuring of American capitalism, this explosion of the welfare rolls only added to the culture of family disintegration and dependency in inner-city neighborhoods, with rampant illegitimacy, crime, school failure and drug abuse among a fast-growing underclass.

Seeking new worlds to conquer, Wiley sent one of his young lieutenants, Wade Rathke, to Little Rock, Ark., to launch a community-organizing group that called itself Acorn (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.) The welfare rights group soon self-destructed, but Acorn grew very fast by exploiting the inner-city underclass that Wiley had helped to create and by cleverly making alliances with other big city progressive groups such as unions and churches.

By the 1990s, local Acorn chapters were well entrenched in inner-city communities through the organization's housing and mortgage services. The overall aim was to build a broad constituency of low-income and working-class people to agitate for social change. At the same time, Acorn began providing the shock troops for the campaigns of local leftist Democratic politicians--as it often did in Barack Obama's Chicago.

Acorn is now exclusively a Democratic Party albatross. The organization’s many abuses of power now coming to light have been enabled by Democratic mayors, governors and congressmen. If Barack Obama wants to effectively refute the charge by some on the right that he has a secret socialist agenda, he has the perfect opportunity. All he has to do is declare that his administration will henceforth act to block taxpayer funds from ever again going to this very openly radical and socialist organization.

Statement from ACORN regarding recent news reports
09/12/09 / http://tinyurl.com/lfwjdb
The following is a statement from ACORN Chief Organizer Bertha Lewis, September 12, 2009, Regarding Recent News Reports

The relentless attacks on ACORN’s members, its staff and the policies and positions we promote are unprecedented. An international entertainment conglomerate, disguising itself as a “news” agency (Fox), has expended millions, if not tens of millions of dollars, in their attempt to destroy the largest community organization of Black, Latino, poor and working class people in the country. It is not coincidence that the most recent attacks have been launched just when health care reform is gaining traction. It is clear they’ve had these tapes for months.

We are their Willy Horton for 2009. We are the boogeyman for the right-wing and its echo chambers. If ACORN did not exist, the right-wing would have needed to create us in order to achieve their agenda, their missions, their ideal, retrograde America. This recent scam, which was attempted in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia to name a few places, had failed for months before the results we’ve all recently seen. I am appalled and angry; I cannot and I will not defend the actions of the workers depicted in the video, who have since been terminated. But it is clear that the videos are doctored, edited, and in no way the result of the fabricated story being portrayed by conservative activist “filmmaker” O’Keefe and his partner in crime. And, in fact, a crime it was - our lawyers believe a felony - and we will be taking legal action against Fox and their co-conspirators. / http://pww.org/article/view/16988

The Politics of Race -- Flames Fanned by a Former President:

Friday, September 18, 2009

The Democrats, led by certain members of Congress and former President Jimmy Carter, have developed a new tactic to dismiss growing displeasure with President Obama’s policies. As his approval ratings continue to drop, hesitancy over health care has snarled the plan’s progress, and tens of thousands marched on Washington this past weekend, the left has decided the entire opposition can be dismissed by the obfuscating charge of racism.

Just Tuesday, former President Carter told “NBC Nightly News,” "I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African-American.”

No one wants to fall in with racists, to heed racially motivated comments, or to be lumped in with their kind -- so, to President Carter’s thinking, what choice do we have but to ignore the discontent of any American and praise the administration blindly?

This sort of mindset is not only ignorant, but actually dangerous. A former president of the United States has equated opposition to nationalized health care, government bailouts, and out-of-control spending, to racist motives solely because the sitting president is black. Is that the sort of progress we need in this country? Progress where we can no longer have a national debate because of skin color? That’s not the sort of progress President Obama has advocated.

President Carter has failed to account for the fact that millions of Americans are simply fed up with the big government policies coming out of Washington -- the same policies they denounced under President Clinton, at times under Republican Presidents Bush, and certainly from a certain President Carter. Perhaps Carter could take the time to recall conservative frustration when Republican President George W. Bush’s administration spent too much for their liking, or liberal frustration on social issues. Were those concerns racist? Of course not!

In that same interview, Carter also chastened us that, “No matter who he is or how much we disagree with his policies, the president should be treated with respect."

It seems to me that the ones forgetting that creed have not been the millions who fear government interference in their insurance plans, children’s education, and small businesses. No, the one who seems to forget that is none other than President Carter himself.

After all, let’s remember now who it was who called President George W. Bush’s sitting administration the “worst in history.” Or do you recall the claim that President Bush had inspired an “overt reversal of America’s basic values” and that his “arrogance” and “fundamentalism” were taking the country in the wrong direction?

Could it be…Jimmy Carter?

Of course we should treat our sitting President with respect, and I will be the first to stand against those who do not treat President Obama as the duly elected leader of this country, and you had better believe that I will oppose any racially-motivated attacks against President Obama or any other leader or individual in this nation.

But in a democracy, in this great and free country, we retain the right of dissent, the right of free speech, the right to oppose government policies and the direction of our leadership, and the right to speak that disagreement publicly. If we lose that freedom, if we allow it to be suppressed by claims of racism, then what sort of free society are we?

Moreover, with his comments, President Carter is in essence telling independent voters across the country, including those who may have voted for Obama in 2008, that if they disagree with the president on any issue, their disagreement must stem from racist motives rather than clear thinking. Now that is not smart politics, and it’s something Democrats should stand up and oppose as well.

These latest comments by Carter cannot help by remind me how fortunate we were as a nation that my father’s election removed him from office.

ACORN Support in Congress Collapses:

2009 September 18

The Washington Examiner’s Byron York marvelled at the speed with which congressional support for ACORN collapsed in recent days as Americans were filled with revulsion over undercover videotapes showing ACORN workers openly encouraging lawbreaking.

On the “Glenn Beck Program,” York noted that after the Senate voted to defund ACORN a few days ago, the House followed suit, voting to ban all federal funds to the radical Saul Alinsky-inspired community organizing group.


York explained his thinking today, writing:

The ACORN vote in the House is stunning news. Just 48 hours after Republican Leader John Boehner introduced the “Defund ACORN Act,” the bill — which most Republicans thought Democrats would do anything to block — passed by a resounding 345-75 vote. It would never have made it to a vote had not the Democratic leadership decided to allow it, and the winning total included 172 Democrats. Yes, 172 House Democrats voted to totally cut off funding for an organization that has worked for years on behalf of Democrats nationwide.

Couple that with the 83-7 Senate vote to cut off housing funds to ACORN — a number that included 50 Democrats — and the votes signal the complete collapse of Democratic support for ACORN.

Meanwhile, don’t be fooled by ACORN’s announcement that it plans to have a supposedly independent panel review its affairs.

It’s a cynical sham.

ACORN did the same thing last year after an internal scandal, but when the honest people on ACORN’s internal panel began asking uncomfortable questions, it cast them out.

The new panel is packed with corrupt liberal cronies including SEIU’s Andy Stern and former Clinton aide John Podesta.

caspian: Chris Dodd may be having one of those visions of self conscience awakenings I was talking about earlier this month. Let's see what happens from this point onward. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/business/economy/20regulate.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

John:

Too me it is only a small baby step in the right direction.

The banks are too big to fail and that my friend is the PROBLEM.

Obama should mirror Teddy Roosevelt and break up the banks and Franklin Roosevelt and implement policies that would benefit the masses of Americans instead of the wealthy few who own Congress.

Bush Republicans were 100% for Wall Street and Obama Democrats are 90% working for Wall Street.

The corporate Democrats are putting a band aid on a cancer that HAS TO BE surgically removed.

CHANGE?

I THINK NOT!

Treason -- Often An Essential Business Practice / http://tinyurl.com/krtear
(Swans - July 30, 2007) Each month I screen a film on some recent news event, situation, story or subject that was ignored, suppressed, or distorted by the major media. In June I delved back into history to the 1930s for a documentary, The Plot to Overthrow FDR, that told an earthshaking story that was covered up soon after it was exposed and has been ignored ever since. Because of its profound implications I felt it was a story that should be reviewed.
In 1934 a very popular retired general of the marines, Smedley Butler, told a congressional committee that a well-funded group had approached him to lead veterans in a coup d'état of Franklin Roosevelt's administration! The plans were based on the successful takeovers of the Italian government by Mussolini and his Fascists, the German government by Hitler and the Nazis, and by pending actions of French fascists, the Croix de Feu. Why? The wealthy elite of the country were furious that the FDR-led government enacted legislation they deemed inimical to their interests.
The agitation, disorder, and fear that accompanied the depression caused Roosevelt to employ unusual, unprecedented and even contradictory measures to preserve the existing system from overthrow. If anything it gave the overwhelming majority of the people confidence that their government was on their side and was going to help them. The elite, however, did not see it the same way. Any benefits to the others would obviously affect them negatively. They considered Roosevelt, a blue-blood like themselves, a traitor to their class. / http://www.swans.com/library/art13/pgreen117.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090920/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_health_care_overhaul

Obama: Health insurance mandate no tax increase
-----------------------------------

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama says requiring people to get health insurance and fining them if they don't would not amount to a backhanded tax increase. "I absolutely reject that notion," the president said.

Blanketing most of the Sunday TV news shows, Obama defended his proposed health care overhaul, including a key point of the various health care bills on Capitol Hill: mandating that people get health insurance to share the cost burden fairly among all. Those who failed to get coverage would face financial penalties.

Obama said other elements of the plan would make insurance affordable for people, from a new comparison-shopping "exchange" to tax credits.

Telling people to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase, Obama told ABC's "This Week."

"What it's saying is, is that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore," said Obama. "Right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance. Nobody considers that a tax increase."

Obama faces an enormous political and communications challenge in selling his health care plan as Congress debates how to pay for it all.

He told CBS' "Face the Nation" that he will keep his pledge not to raise taxes on families earning up to $250,000, and that much of the final bill — hundreds of billions of dollars over the next 10 years — can be achieved from savings within the current system. Coming up with the rest remains a key legislative obstacle.

Obama put his support behind the idea of taxing employers that offer high-cost insurance plans.

"I do think that giving a disincentive to insurance companies to offer Cadillac plans that don't make people healthier is part of the way that we're going to bring down health care costs for everybody over the long term," Obama said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Obama's network interviews were taped Friday at the White House. He became the first president to appear on five Sunday network shows in the same morning, an extraordinary effort to build public support for his top domestic priority.

The goal is expand and improve health insurance coverage and rein in long-term costs.

Yet despite so many weeks of speeches, town halls and interviews, Obama said he has found it difficult at times to make a complex topic clear and relevant.

"I've tried to keep it digestible," Obama said. "It's very hard for people to get their arms around it. And that's been a case where I have been humbled and I just keep on trying harder."

Obama told Univision's "Al Punto" ("To the Point") that the strong opposition to his plan is part of a political strategy.

"Well, part of it is ... that the opposition has made a decision," he said. "They are just not going to support anything, for political reasons."

Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Obama doesn't understand Republicans' opposition.

"I don't know anybody in my Republican conference in the Senate who's in favor of doing nothing on health care," McConnell said. "We obviously have a cost problem and we have an access problem."

But he told CNN's "State of the Union" that the Democrats' plan is simply too rushed.

Caspian: There are many grassroots associations being formed to aid this President in his fight against the corporates. Get involved, seek out the truth seekers. Observe and counter those which do not break the chains of party dogmatisms. As always, think for yourself when engaging them, and offer your expertise when they are championing the common good without the proverbial strings attached.

John, we are fighting against City Hall!

The whole corporate Republican party and more than half the corporate Democratic party.

All corporate Rightwing media which dominates the American airwaves.

The corporate mainstream media which gives half-truths most of the time.

A Quick Aside: Did you see how ignorant Wolf Blitzer was on Jeopardy?

This is the imbecile on CNN cable news 24/7.

John I admit Matthews is getting much better the last year or two but that does not excuse his ignorance for 6 years of Bush / Cheney.

LOL Check This Out!

Chris Matthews, The Interviewer As Mugger

The 'race' flap
A liberal fantasy:

September 19, 2009


OF all the poisonous, ugly and intellectually vapid controversies ginned up in my lifetime, the current breakout of St. Vitus' Dance over the "racist" opposition to Barack Obama may be the most egregious.

Al Sharpton tells CNN's Larry King that decent and racially sensitive Americans shouldn't let a small minority make health care into a "racial issue."

Someone in the control room surely yelled, "Cue the laugh track!"

In case you don't get the joke, this "debate" over whether opposition to Obama's health-care reform is racist is in every way conceivable an invention of the left.

Oh, sure, there are some racists who oppose Obama. Shocking news, that.
Yes, a tiny fraction of the signs at the Tea Party protests last weekend were racially insensitive. But if that's how we're going to score, then opposition to the Iraq war is anti-Semitic. After all, I saw a bunch of signs at antiwar protests that said bigoted things about Jews.

Meanwhile, no significant conservative politician, pundit or intellectual has said that they object to Obama's agenda because he's black. Rather, they've said they oppose his agenda for precisely the same reasons they oppose Nancy Pelosi's and Harry Reid's and Barney Frank's agendas -- just as they did with Bill Clinton and Democratic presidents before him.

Magically, the alchemic powers of Obama's black skin transmogrify the same arguments and the same rhetoric into racism. Saying "you're wrong" to a white politician is a disagreement; saying it to a black politician is like shouting through Bull Connor's megaphone.

It's been said that a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich. Well, these people can indict a ham sandwich for being racist.

Left-wing writers spent the week droning on about how it's now racist to say, "I want my country back." These amnesiacs are blissfully unaware that "taking back" America was the rallying cry of the Democratic Party for eight years under George W. Bush. Anti-white racists all?

Jimmy Carter sighs, "It's an abominable circumstance, and it grieves me and concerns me very deeply."

Well, ditto. Except the abominable circumstance is the Vesuvian eruption of nonsense from liberals frustrated by their inability to win a policy debate.

An "overwhelming proportion" of the vocal opposition to Obama stems from the "inherent feeling" that "an African-American should not be president," testifies the voice of Southern self-loathing and pharisaical pomposity.

Really, President Carter? Based on what? Polls you've studied? Which ones? Or did you descend from the temple of the Carter Center, flee your entourage of sycophants and canvass some neighborhoods yourself? How many people told you they don't think a black man should be president? One? Two? Zero? Or are you simply reading minds again?

The good news is that the race peddlers have undermined themselves. The notion that opposing skyrocketing deficits and socialized medicine is racist is met with eye rolls by the vast majority of Americans, who do not need Sharpton and Carter to tell them what is -- or is not -- in their own hearts.

In fairness, when it became clear that Carter had turned this "debate" from mere fraud to farce, it suddenly dawned on some Democrats, including those in the White House, that smearing millions of constituents and swing voters (many of whom voted for Obama) as racists isn't the best politics. So one cheer for those who objected to this idiocy too little and far too late.

But others won't let go. The New York Times' Maureen Dowd hears Rep. Joe Wilson shout, "You lie!" Her instinctive response: "Fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!"

It's the "fair or not" that gives Dowd away. She admits to hearing racism whether or not it's warranted. That's called prejudice. And unlike Wilson's foolish outburst, her words were carefully considered.

Dowd, Carter and Sharpton can't grasp that conservatives are less hung up on race than they are and that we can get past Obama's skin color. "Some people just can't believe a black man is president and will never accept it," writes Dowd. She's right. She's one of them.